


Time Is A Fickle Thing

by Kraeyola



Series: Number Five | And The Things that Make Him Tick [3]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Number Five | The Boy Deserves Better, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy-centric, One-Shot, Other, Short, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 07:01:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26469112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kraeyola/pseuds/Kraeyola
Summary: Five was thirteen years old when he left.He was twenty when he realized that time-travel was a flip of the coin.And he is fifty-eight when he gets back to them, whole, alive, and seemingly untouched by time.AKA: A small, short ficlet I wrote on a whim about Five, and what he must have felt when he was living in the apocaylpse.
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), Number Five | The Boy & Ben Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: Number Five | And The Things that Make Him Tick [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1892845
Comments: 4
Kudos: 117





	Time Is A Fickle Thing

"I want to time travel." Five snaps. His heart pounds with a mixture of rage and nerves. As predicted Reginald Hargreeves refuses but Five is no stranger to rule-breaking. 

Something about today has him all antsy. Electricity thrumming under his skin, ozone pouring from his fingers, and the cold-hiss of space-time tugging at his feet as he runs. Feet pounding. Body lurching.

He races through time like he was meant to. The air rushes around him, the world warping, seasons changing. He smiles. Excitement surging through him as he tugs on the strands of energy that nobody else could see, and he _pulls_. Five yanks himself forward. The air is suddenly hot against his face. Smoke billows into his nostrils, he reels backward,

Feet catching against the rubble. 

He falls.

If he looked back on it maybe it was the coffee he had snuck in that morning or the lack of missions they had throughout that particular week. It could have been a myriad of things. So many intertwining paths and branching options that led him to where he was now; injured, tired, and so, so terribly alone.

Time is fickle, as Five would later learn. 

Space may answer to his beck and call but time? Time was the scarlet touch of a flirty kiss, the swish of a red-evening dress, it was the coy touch of somebody you could not have. Time was the wisp of a smoker's cigar. Out of touch. Out of reach. But still so addicting.

Five let's out a wretched cough. The air forcefully pushing through his raw throat as he crumples to the floor. His lungs are filled with ash. The heat clings to his skin as his knees give in, the world swirling around him when he finds their bodies buried among the ash and rubble. Limbs stone-cold. Rigor mortis had long since taken them, but they had yet to start rotting. 

So he digs. Bare hands clawing at the rubble. Slowly chipping away at his own nail's till they were nothing more but stubs. Later, when he was older he would regret so hastily burying them. When his hands ached with old aches, and his nails never quite grew in right. 

But right now? It's all he has on his mind. Nevermind shelter, nevermind water even when his throat is screaming for it, and nevermind food even though his stomach begs for it. 

Nevermind it all. 

It doesn't matter. 

Nothing matters when he found only Luther, Allison, and Klaus. 

Even when his fingers are bleeding and the skin is peeling off his hands he does not stop. Five can not afford to stop. 

There is no time to grieve. 

So he works, days and nights to bury the three he found.

He wonders what happened to Vanya, and Ben. To the two siblings, he had loved and cherished despite his arrogant attitude. Had they been okay? Had they stayed up the night he ran watching the windows for his return? Did they still talk about reading books in his bedroom? Did they still sneak out for secret trips to Griddy's? Did Vanya still order one too many donuts for Five and Ben? 

He hopes they do. Prays that they're unaffected by his disappearance.

Hopes for his own sake that they don't miss him, that he didn't add to their family's already long list of tragedies, and sufferings. Hopes that Vanya and Ben grow to hate him. Because as long as they hate him, they won't feel that same, empty, ravenous clawing feeling in his ribcage. 

He wouldn't wish this feeling on anyone. 

Not even on Reginald Hargreeves.

* * *

Five crouches down, his ankle bent at the wrong angle after he had taken a particularly nasty fall. The ground had broken under him. The concrete splitting apart like glass. Every time he moves, a sharp stab of pain shoots through him.

His weight must have been too much. 

He was lucky. Barely managing to save his own life by warping out of the way. Even if he hadn't done the calculations right and landed wrong, he was still lucky. To get out of an accident like that with just a broken ankle?

Lucky. 

He wraps dirtied gauze around his ankle, to keep the two wooden sticks in place for a make-shift splinter. He struggles to stand. Dust, and pebbles rolling off his ragged clothes, as he carefully adjusts his backpack. 

He pushes forward.

If he stops, then he dies and Five can not afford to stop. There is no time to rest and no time to grieve. He shoves the pain aside and compartmentalizes every single torrent of emotion he feels. 

If he wants to make it back, then he needs to keep going.

* * *

He finds Vanya's book in a library that miraculously survived the end of everything. At first, he couldn't believe it. The pages were still untouched by the smoke, the cover still shiny with its plastic lamination. He doesn't have the time to read it though, at least not now.

He slips it into his coat pocket, the one he reserved for his water casket. 

When he makes it back to where he'd set up for the night he opens it. He starts a fire, sets a cockroach over it to roast, and starts reading. He pours over the pages. Eating up each and every word as he learns about how his family grew up without him. He only stops to eat the cockroach and to take a swig of his water.

At first, he's angry. When he reads Vanya's chapter and discovers all her inner thoughts, and feelings. How alone she felt, especially after his disappearance. The way they treated her once Ben died. Rage is dangerous, it is a wild-fire in the apocalypse. If you hit something too hard you could cause a collapse, or break something you were trying to salvage. He's learned how to temper it. Especially after breaking his last water bottle.

He aches for her.

Luther's chapter comes and goes. It's predictable. He reads it again, with a mixture of fondness and annoyance. Diego's chapter is by far the least surprising. He always did let their father get to him too much. It's what made him almost as predictable as Luther. By the time Allison's chapter comes around it's a new day. He'd hate himself for it later, but he refuses to move until he's finished it. Ben's chapter was the shortest. Only small paragraphs of what he had been like, and what the two of them shared after his disappearance before it cuts off into Five's chapter. 

He pauses.

Fingers hovering nervously at the pages before he continues reading. This is when he learned that they stopped going out to Griddy's doughnuts. That Ben and Vanya stopped reading in his room and instead left out peanut-butter Marshmellow sandwiches for him instead. He learns they left the lights on. And he keeps learning, and learning, and learning.

Digging himself a grave as he eats through the words with a heavy heart. 

By the end of it, the last paragraph to his chapter reads: 

_Five, if you're reading this I hope you know that we don't hate that you left, even if we never stopped wishing for you to come back. Things were hard and I get why you left. But, it's okay. I hope you're happy, wherever you are._

He cries, for the first time in 40 long years.

* * *

He is old, aching, and dying when the Handler finds him. So warped by the loneliness, and the ghosts of years gone that he doesn't believe it when he sees her. He aims the rifle he kept, much to Delores's disdain _(she knows the real reason why he keeps it)_.

When she offers a hand, Five takes it. But not for himself.

Never for himself.

He could never do anything for himself anymore.

Not after the pain and grief, he caused his family.

He takes it because Five promised himself when he first read Vanya's book he'd make it back. 

And he'd change everything. 

He'll make it up to Ben who died too young, and to Vanya who left peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches for him every night.

* * *

Five was thirteen years old when he left. 

He was twenty when he realized that time-travel was a flip of the coin.

And he is fifty-eight when he gets back to them, whole, alive, and seemingly untouched by time. 

_(But time is a fickle thing, and it's touched every part of his skin. Buried its kisses along his neck, nails digging grooves along his back, it's bitter-cold fingers tracing single figures all over his heart.)_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! :)


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